Language Policies and the Organisation of School: Differences and Commonalities
In the first half of the twentieth century, assimilation was the aim in Norway (Eriksen and Niemi 1981). Sweden instead developed a policy of segregation by means of the nomad school to preserve the reindeer-herding culture (Lantto 2003, 33–34; Sjogren 2010).
In Finland, there was no official policy of assimilation (Nyyssonen 2007, 105). Despite these differences, language policies in practice—i.e. in the classroom—did not differ greatly. In Norway, Norwegian was the official school language. Sami could be used as an auxiliary language and in some districts as the language of religious instruction for the youngest children. In Finland, Finnish was the preferred language in most areas, and it is well documented that organisations like the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) saw it as their mission to ‘civilise’ the children and make them Finnish (Saukko 2011). Nor was there an official policy about the teaching language in Sweden, but in practice, literacy teaching took place in Swedish, while the Sami language could be used as an auxiliary language, as in Norway. This was still the case when the nomad school was established in 1913. New school acts (1925 and 1938) formally ruled that the teaching language was to be Swedish (Samiska i skolan).In Norway and Sweden, an ideological turning point took place in the 1950s and 1960s, supported by scientists, politicians, and Sami spokespersons. From 1959, when a new act on elementary education (Lov om folkeskolen) was passed, Sami could be used as a language of tuition in Norway. The practice lagged behind, though, because of a lack of both qualified teachers and local political will. Many Sami parents did not want their children to be taught in Sami, and the shift from Norwegian to Sami in areas with a large Sami population happened only gradually. In 1961, a young Sami, Odd Mathis H?tta (1961), who had just started teacher training, described the situation in Finnmark thus:
At school, children from nomadic societies and children coming from small societies in the periphery meet an exotic language that they do not understand.
The children have to listen to a teacher who cannot speak Sami or who does not want to speak Sami. For that reason, the children are helpless. He explains to no avail. He teaches the children to read, but to no avail since they do not understand what they are reading.The situation improved in the 1970s and 1980s; in 1998, Norwegian Sami children’s rights to education in Sami was protected by a new law on elementary and secondary education, provided they lived in what was defined as Sami language areas (Lov om grunnskolen og den vidaregaande oppl?ring 1998).
From 1962, the nomad school in Sweden was optional for all Sami children and no longer limited to children from reindeer-herding families. The language of tuition was still Swedish, but instruction in Sami language became obligatory if only for two hours a week. The 2009 Act on national minorities and minority languages (Lag 2009, 724) has strengthened the position of the Sami language. According to current law, children who live in one of the nineteen defined Sami areas shall mainly use a Sami language for the first six years of schooling.
After World War II, Finland still had no official assimilation policies, but in practice, assimilation dominated the post-war period. Several authors state that language policies in Finland became harsher in this period than before, due to the introduction of residential schools (Pietikäinen 2010; Nyyssonen 2007). The Sami revival and greater acceptance of cultural diversity gave Sami language and culture a more secure position. Since the mid-1970s, Sami has been taught in Sami areas in Finland; in some cases, it has been the language of tuition. Legislation dating from 1983 ensured a stronger position of the Sami language in schools in the Sami Domicile Area (Keskitalo, Määttä, and Uusiautti 2012, 332, 334). The move has not only been towards strengthening the position of Sami language in school but also the position of Sami culture.
Let us now turn to the organisation of elementary schooling.
Today, residential schools are no longer common in Norway, but many Sami, Norwegian, and Kven (descendants of Finnish emigrants) children in Finnmark attended residential schools well into the post-war period. In 1940, ca. 2,800 of 7,900 schoolchildren in Finnmark attended boarding schools. In 1989, there were only four boarding schools left; in 1999, the last two in Karasjok and Kautokeno were closed (Tjelle 2000, 16–17). Residential schools became common after 1905 as symbolic manifestations of Norway’s jurisdiction of the border areas; they were a means to strengthen Norwegian identity among the children and ensure that all children in the sparsely populated region of Finnmark attended school. Prior to the huge effort to build and organise the residential school system, a large number of children received instruction, mainly religious, in ambulatory schools where the teacher moved from place to place. In Finland, it was not until the 1946 School Act that residential schools attained a privileged position and attendance became compulsory (Nyyssonen 2007, 117).In Norway and Finland, Norwegian, Finnish, and Sami children who did not live near a school or were from reindeer-herding families stayed at residential schools throughout the school year. The school year varied in length and was at first so short that the children spent much more time at home than at school. Even so, this system gave the children’s families scant opportunity to influence the schooling.
In Sweden, the nomad school was initially for children from reindeer-herding families only. Children from non-nomadic families went to the ordinary school with no special treatment; thus, there was a system of segregation between the nomads and ‘the rest’, be they settled Sami, Finns, or Swedes. Teachers who followed the Sami from one seasonal area to the next taught the youngest children, while the older children were taught at residential nomad schools. The Swedish authorities wanted to make sure the nomads did not leave reindeer herding, partly because of ideology—the belief that settled nomads became second-rate citizens—and partly because of the national economy. The particular organisation of the schools was part of such policies (Lantto 2012, 153).